BRKCRS-3900: NBase-T and the Evolution of Ethernet

Presenters: Dave Zacks, Distinguished Engineer; Peter Zones, Principle Engineer
History has been: 10x performnce increase at 3x the cost. 40Gb broke that model –> 100Gb PHYs were very expensive; industry needed/wanted an intermediate step.
Ethernet has a really strong roadmap and will continue to evolve for a very long time. Roadmap: http://www.ethernetalliance.org/roadmap/

25Gb – direct server connect (Twinax)

40GBase-T (Cat 8 cable!)

2.5/5G – N-BaseT

400Gb

More

SERDES

Serializer/deserializer

Turns bits on the wire into bytes and vise-versa

40Gb Ethernet based on 4x10Gb SERDES

100m is the sweet spot for copper cable lengths. Why? CSMA/CD and also electrical wiring, placement of wiring closets just make 100m the right fit.

Cisco Mgig

PoE/PoE+/UPoE

Standards compliant

Investment protection (existing cable plant)

Supports 100M but not 10M; (had to drop something as far as standards and nobody uses 10M anymore really)

802.11ac Wave 2

Max PHY rate: 6.8Gbps (in absolute best conditions)

More likely 3-ish Gb/s

Point: it’s more than 1Gbs

Cisco Mgig products:

4500E line card

New 3850 models with Mgig ports

New compact 3560CX with 2x Mgig ports

Between 2003 and 2014, approx 70 billion meters of Cat 5e and Cat 6 cabling were sold

NBase-T must support existing cabling plants. 90% of the install base is Cat 5e and Cat6. Cat 6a is 8%. Cat 7 is 1%.

Cat 5e and Cat6 installed outlets are still growing (!)

The growth in wireless cannot be overstated as the driver for Nbase-T.

Side note: CLUS NOC is showing the majority of connected devices at the conference are 11ac, far exceeding 11n

Beyond Wave 2, there’s Wave 3

Beyond 11ac there’s 11ax

Wireless is a monster and will keep growing like this

The standards (1000Base-T at 100m) covers the worst case channel; the channel in the middle of the bundle (the victim channel). Your actual realized performance and lenth is subject to which channel is being used, quality of the cable, number of connectors and much more.

IEEE 802.3bz – 2.5G/5GBASE-T standard

Is there a competing standard? There was, but they voted in support of NBase-T.

My goal is not to split the industry. If we do that, we’ve done you [customers] a disservice. –Peter

Cisco Canada’s new headquarters in Toronto is one of the most technologically advanced buildings in the world.

All lights powered by PoE from the wiring closet

140x 3560CX switches up in the ceiling

Full building automation

PoE

802.3bt 4PPoE targets 100W at the PSE

Sends power down all 4 pairs

Backwards compat with PoE/PoE+

PoDL

Power over Data Line

Power for one-pair ethernet

Use cases: vehicles, IoT, new areas where Ethernet hasn’t gone before

Plastic Optical Fiber (POF) – Fiber cable that’s so easy to use it’s perfect for the house where you can cut and splice it without special tools

Thx, That is what I thought as well but so far no one could confirm. It will be great then since i could expect basically 10Gbps Ethernet connection, but down clocked to 5G /2.5 should cable fair to meet requirement.

But that also brings me concern, I don’t see how we could get the 10Gbps Ethernet prices down by a significant margin….